Embrace of the Serpent
Indigenous Peoples
•
2h 4m
Directed by Ciro Guerra • Drama • With Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolívar, Jan Bijvoet • 2015 • 125 minutes
At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning black-and-white, SERPENT centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes) who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.
—2015 Cannes Film Festival
—2016 Sundance Film Festival
Up Next in Indigenous Peoples
-
Homecoming - Máhccan
Directed by Suvi West, Anssi Kömi • Documentary • 2023 • 76 minutes
Filmmaker Suvi West takes the audience behind the scenes of the museum world, revealing a visual, philosophical, and spiritual realm. Sámi herself, she seeks a connection with her ancestors through old museum objects, eventually...
-
Ella's Riot - Rahčan
Directed by Anne Marthe Blindheim • Documentary • 2023 • 72 minutes
Sami singer Ella is torn between her strong ties to her hometown in Finnmark and her new life in Oslo with her boyfriend and a successful career with her band ISÁK. But when a mining company threatens Sami land and water, she de...
-
The River Between Us
Directed by Carl Gierstorfer • Documentary • 2022 • 88 minutes
The people of the Mashco Piro fled deep into the Peruvian Amazon to escape the cruelty of colonialist rubber companies. They cut all contact with the outside world and entered an isolation they haven’t abandoned to this day. Carl Gie...